If she has been safely shielded from books which were not written for The Young Person, Mademoiselle believes that marriage is a bond which is not to be broken except by death. It is a severe shock when she first discovers that death changes nothing; that it is only life which separates utterly.
That Pitiful Story
That pitiful story of "the other woman" comes from quarters which the uninitiated would never suspect. With grim loyalty, married women hide their hearts from each other. Many a smile conceals a tortured soul. When the burden is no longer to be borne, a spinster is asked to share it.
A woman will forgive a man anything except disloyalty to herself. Crimes which the law stands ready to punish rank as naught with her, if the love between them is untarnished by doubt or mistrust. Any offence prompted by her own charm, even a duel to the death with a rival suitor, is easily condoned. But though God may be able to forgive disloyalty, in her heart of hearts no woman ever can.
An Idle Flirtation
More often than not, it is simply an idle flirtation, or, at the most, a passing fancy which the next week may prove transient and unreal. The woman with the heartache will say, with wet eyes and quivering lips: "I know, positively, that my husband has done nothing wrong. I would go to the stake upon that belief. He is only weak and foolish and a little vain, perhaps, and some day he will see his mistake, but I cannot bear to see him compromise himself and me in the eyes of the world. Of course, I know," she will say, proudly, "but there are others who do not,—who are always ready to suspect,—and I will not have them pity me!"
When nearly all the married friends a spinster has have come to her with the same story, the variations being individual and of slight moment, she begins to have serious doubts of matrimony as a satisfactory career. Women who have been married five, ten, and even twenty years; women with children grown and whom the world counts safely and happily married, will sob bitterly in the embrace of the chosen girl friend.
Indifference
Indifference is the only counsel one has to offer, but even so, it gradually becomes the first of the steppes upon the heart-way which lead to an emotional Siberia.
Of course there are women who are insanely jealous of their husbands, and, more rarely, men who are jealous of their wives. Jealousy may be explained as innate vanity and selfishness or as a defect in temperament, but at any rate, it is a condition which is far past the theoretical stage.